Belle rose early as she had ever since coming to the Dark Castle. The difference was that, today, she felt well-rested and not afraid—not as afraid—of what the day would bring. She flexed her fingers, feeling them press against the bandages without any pain.
The Dark One said he hadn't given up. But, Belle had learned to take the good moments life gave her, no matter how short they might be.
She went over to the chest where her things were. The Dark One had taken her velvet dress. Though he'd promised her others, she expected she'd have to make do today. She sighed. All the dresses Gaston gave her were so awful—and so thin and flimsy in the Dark Castle's chill halls.
But, there were new clothes already folded neatly on top of the chest, three black dresses along with stockings, shifts, and everything else she needed. There was even a black shawl and two pairs of very practical looking shoes. She dressed quickly and quietly, careful not to wake Bae.
The buttons and ties were simple enough. She found, when she pushed the buttons through their holes, her fingertips were still raw enough to sting. It felt like trying to untwist the lid from a jar that didn't want to come off. Not painful, not exactly, but a warning that pushing much harder could become so. She was grateful for how few buttonholes she had to deal with.
The cut of the dress was a different. She supposed fashions after three centuries (had it really been three centuries? Lord Maurice had believed it. But, how was it possible?) would have changed. What mattered was that she could move easily in it and thought the cloth felt well-made and sturdy enough for scrubbing floors in. Still, odd cut aside, it fitted well.
Belle felt a small twinge of fear. She'd dealt with Gaston dressing her up like a doll and with Jones before that dressing her up . . . less like a doll. She put her gold locket around her neck and found her hand tightening around it till the newly healed skin stung.
But, the dress covered her as completely as the black velvet had. She didn't need to worry about what it did or didn't reveal. When she pulled her hair back into a simple braid, held in place with a black ribbon, she didn't need to worry about arranging it to hide anything. Not the way she had with Gaston, who always preferred her to have her hair hanging down her back when he summoned her to his rooms, just in case.
Never mind. The Dark One didn't look at her that way. She wasn't even sure he was a man. She found the thought comforting. Whatever he was, perhaps he found the sight of her—pale-skinned, scaleless and fangless—repulsive.
Belle stepped out into the hallway and went looking for the Dark One. She hesitated. He'd told her the castle would show her the way, but he hadn't really explained it, had he?
Belle looked up and down the corridor, looking for some sign. Finally, she cleared her throat. "Er," she asked the walls. "I need to find the Dark One. Can you help me?"
The candles lighting the hall one way dimmed. The others brightened. Belle swallowed. The magic she'd seen so far was always when the Dark One was present, snapping his fingers or waving a hand. Compared to taking her and Bae from Maurice's court to the Dark Castle in an instant, flickering candles were nothing. But, it was the first magic she'd seen here that happened when he wasn't present—that happened because of something she'd done.
Assuming the brighter candles were leading the way (not, she thought, a certainty when she was in the Dark Castle searching for the Dark One), she followed them. At first, Belle thought they were leading her to the tower workroom, but they veered off. She followed them up and down more stairs and through more corridors (and wondered if this was part of the "round two" the Dark One had promised her) when she saw the door to one of the rooms up ahead left partly open. The candles were lit by it but not beyond.
She would have knocked on the door, but it swung all the way open as she approached. She looked in and saw small room that looked like the corner of one of the castle attics back in the Marchlands. There were trunks, chests, and assorted boxes carefully piled, one on top of the other. Bits of old furniture were hidden beneath sheets to keep the dust off. The Dark One stood at the far end of the room by the window. There was an old, cedar chest in front of him, its lid thrown back. He was holding a rag doll in his hand.
It was a simple doll, the sort any little girl back in Belle's home village might have had. It had painted-on, pale-blue eyes and hair made from red-brown yarn. It wore a fanciful ball gown made from simple linen died a happy yellow—or a ball gown imagined by someone who'd never seen one. Of course, Gaston would never have given Belle a gown like that even if it were silk or cloth of gold. It's slight, embroidered bodice showed far too much shoulder and back (and not enough front, she thought sourly). There was something sad and faraway in the way the Dark One looked at it. Then, he looked up at her.
The yellow streaks in his eyes blazed. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"You—you sent for me," Belle said, backing away. "You said to come—the candles showed me the way—I-I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"
His glare turned to disgust. "Don't grovel. It's no matter. Only you took me by surprise." He looked at the doll. "Well?" he snapped at Belle. "I'm sure you have an annoying question or two."
Belle was sure she had had questions a moment ago, but they'd scattered in the face of his anger. She looked at the doll, desperate for something to say. She'd seen the melancholy look on his face, and he'd told her he'd had a wife. . . . "Did you have a daughter?"
He looked at the doll. There was a grief in his eyes like the grief she felt when she thought of Rumplestiltskin. "No," he said. He looked at the chest. Belle thought he meant to put the doll away and end the conversation. Instead, after a moment he said, "She was like a daughter to me. Her mother was a widow. She'd come to live in our village—I lived in a village in those days—after her husband died. It was a year after—after my wife left." He studied the doll morosely. "The widow suffered spells. She'd been injured in the same fire that killed her husband. A beam had fallen and hit her in the head. When the spells struck her, she just stared at nothing. Morraine—that was her daughter—wandered off during one of them. She was only about a year old. I found her crying on my doorstep. I helped care for her after that." He put the doll away in the chest and closed the lid. "They both died a long time ago. I couldn't save them."
Belle put one hand to her locket. "And, since then . . . you've been alone?" Impulsively, she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said. "I—I know what it is to lose someone you love."
He glared at her, eyes blazing again, and she thought he was going to throw her hand off. But, he swallowed his anger and simply nodded. She thought, for a moment, there was even something like sympathy in his gaze. "Your aunt died to save you," he said. "It may not make the hurt less, but it's something. Hold onto it."
Lady Rosamonde. Belle felt a stab of guilt. She hadn't even been thinking of her—it seemed strange that the Dark One's mind would even jump to her rather than Rumplestiltskin. But, Rumplestiltskin had been seven years dead before Lady Rosamonde had done whatever it was she'd done to save them. He'd never set foot in Lord Maurice's court and his shadow or echo or whatever it was of Rosamonde's that Belle had spoken to each evening for three hundred years had never been there for the Dark One to see.
And Belle still didn't couldn't make sense of what the Dark One had told them, how Lady Rosamonde had rescued them from the Ogres. "I still don't understand," Belle said. "What was it Lady Rosamonde did? How did she save us? Why did. . . ." Belle swallowed, then plunged ahead. "I saw Lord Maurice with a knife by her bedside. I heard what she said to him. He killed her, didn't he? Why?"
"Ah," there was a glint of malicious humor in the Dark One's eyes. "That's a long tale and—" He looked around the room. It was not so much a storage space for forgotten odds and ends, Belle found herself thinking, as a place where the Dark One hid his memories. "—not one I should be telling here." He led her out of the room and down the hallway. The door closed silently behind them.
"Lady Rosamonde's family had been the guardians of certain bits and pieces of old magic. One of them was a curse, a very ancient and terrible one. In the hands of someone more . . . creative than Lord Maurice, it could have been worse. He could have cast it and taken the Marchlands to another Realm, if he'd wanted. He could change nearly anything he liked in your little land, reshaped it as he wished—including a great many ills he could have patched up and fixed. But, I suppose he lacked the imagination to think of it. Even if he had, it might have been better not to. All magic comes with a price, dearie. This one was already costly enough.
"It gave you food, homes that were mended and safe, and everything else you needed. It also trapped you in time, forever living over the same day, and in place. If anyone tried to leave the Marchlands, something would happen to stop them, something unpleasant. It was a curse, after all. But, no one could get in, no matter how hard they tried. The ones who tried too hard—like the Ogres—well, let's just say that bad things happen to bad people. Unless the person's me. It took a while, but I found my way around it.
"But, all that safety the curse gave you came at a high price, the heart of whoever the caster loved best. That's why Maurice killed his wife. Without her heart, he couldn't cast the spell."
She told him to, Belle realized. She'd heard what Rosamonde said to Maurice. And Rosamonde had been dying, her long, terrible illness finally working towards its end. Belle still shuddered, wondering how Maurice had been able to force himself to do it.
She looked at the Dark One. He spoke so lightly, as if all this death and loss were just a good joke played on Maurice and his subjects. "You know a great deal about it. Is it—is it your kind of magic?"
That amused him more than Rosamonde's murder. The Dark One laughed. "I came along years too late, dearie. The curse was long cast by the time I stumbled across your kingdom. Just finding a weakness that would let me through took long enough. Creating something like that, even for me, would have taken centuries." Then, his humor vanished. "And I couldn't have paid the price. The hearts I could have used were long gone. And, for what it's worth, I doubt I could have killed them, not even for this."
A set of double doors swung open for them. "Ah," he said. "This is what I needed to show you." They entered a large, round room (Belle thought they were at the top of a tower) full of books—more books than Belle had ever seen. Some had been properly shelved, others were rammed into bookcases or haphazardly stacked in the shelves, one on top of another. Others lay in piles on tables, chairs, even the floor. "This is your new task. As you can see, the place is a mess. You're to take care of it. Get them straightened out and organized. Keep them dusted. Oh, and tell me if you need more shelves. I expect you'll need to look through them before you arrange them. Take your time. There's no point in just throwing them around if you can't find them later."
"I—I—" Belle looked around, unable to believe what he was offering her. Books, so many books. And he was telling her to take the time to ready through as many as she wanted. How did he even know she loved books? They were the one thing besides Bae that had made life in Maurice's castle bearable.
What, she wondered fearfully, did this have to do with his second round and his desire to be rid of her? But, when she met his eyes, he seemed to be looking at her almost shyly, waiting to see how she liked his gift. "Thank you. Thank you. I'll take good care of them. You have my word."
He nodded, then turned severe. "You'll continue to make and serve breakfast, although I suppose you may as well join Bae and me when we eat our meals. If nothing else, it will let me keep an eye on you. You'll also serve tea and run any other errands I give you. And Bae. You're to keep an eye on Bae. I intend to see him educated, and he'll continue spending part of his day with me. But, I have work to attend to, and can't have him always under foot. He'll be your responsibility when that happens. Do you understand?"
These past days, the only time Belle had spent with Bae was when she was almost too exhausted to speak. This gift meant more to her than the books. "Thank you," Belle said. She tried to put her feelings into words, but it was impossible. "I know what you're doing for me." That was the best she could manage and it was so inadequate. "Thank you."
The Dark One scowled. "I'm only being practical, dearie. I may yet have to take on more servants to keep the boy out of mischief, but you'll do for now. Which reminds me, I need to change those bandages and see how your hands are doing. Then, you'd better get to work on breakfast. Bae will be waking up soon and expecting to eat. I have no more desire to deal with a tired, hungry six year old than you do."
This was wonderful, the kind of life Belle had only dreamed of having. Even if it was just a feint, a distraction before the next salvo in the war the Dark One seemed to think he was waging with her, Belle meant to enjoy every moment of it. If this was a trap, she couldn't stop herself from falling into it even if she saw the way out. And she didn't. If he meant to trap her, he'd won already.
But, later, as she put muffins into the oven, Belle thought about what the Dark One had told her about Lady Rosamonde's curse. Maurice had been able to shape their land any way he wanted too. He had even changed their memories, so they simply accepted that the war with the Ogres had been won.
If he could change their memories—if he could change anything in their world—
He could have given Belle a different life. He could have fulfilled Rosamonde's wish, making the world one where Belle had been raised as his and Rosamonde's daughter. And he hadn't.
Would being Gaston's wife have been any better than being his mistress?
In her heart, she knew it would be. Gaston wasn't Jones. He'd never been cruel to her, not really. But, there were rules in Gaston's world. A mistress' first purpose was to amuse her lord. A wife's first purpose was to command respect. The honor she received reflected back on her husband. He'd have expected her to do her duty, but there would have been none of the—none of the rest of it.
And, really, compared to Jones, Gaston's games had been almost innocent. And he'd never laughed at her pain the way Jones did.
Stop pretending, love, she heard Jones' voice whisper. You enjoy it, every moment of it. All women do. . . .
Jones. Maurice could have let Belle forget about Jones. And he could have made a land where Gaston accepted Baelfire as his own son and heir, a world where she wasn't always fighting to ensure her son's safety.
She closed her eyes, trying to shove the thoughts and memories away. Lord Maurice, as Lady Rosamonde said, lacked imagination. The Dark One had agreed. Likely, changing the world so completely wasn't even been something he could think of, that was all. And he'd had an army of Ogres on his front doorstep keeping his attention. He'd had no reason to waste time on a minor, insignificant girl who (as everyone said) had already risen far above what a bastard like her deserved. According to the Dark One, that blindness of Lord Maurice's was even a good thing. The greater the change, the greater the price.
And why shouldn't Maurice ignore her? She knew the rumors, but that's all they were. Belle had promised never to ask, never to say anything that even suggested she had a suspicion who her father was. That some people said she had Lord Maurice's square jaw or that he had spent more and more time with his wife's sister than was seemly once Rosamonde fell ill, these were just rumors. They meant nothing. Lady Rosamonde might have claimed Belle as her own if Elise hadn't fled the court, but that was before her sons were killed in the Ogre War, when a bastard daughter would have meant nothing to Maurice's legacy. She could have been anyone's daughter, and Maurice might have adopted her to save his wife's family name.
And, of course, if Rosamonde had raised her, there would have been no Bae for Maurice to take into consideration, no half-peasant child with claims of his own—a child Lord Maurice would be willing to sell to a demon rather than risk him someday growing up to challenge Gaston's inheritance.
That the demon had been kind to Bae and even seemed (seemed!) to care about him weren't things Maurice could have known, much as Belle wanted to tell herself otherwise.
And . . . it didn't make a difference, did it? Whatever had happened, Belle had food to cook and a meal to serve. She had a master who let her wear mourning, even if he mocked her for it.
Belle thought of the doll. Even if he mocked her, he understood grieving for someone you'd lost. Even if he didn't believe Belle grieved.
And none of it mattered. What Belle felt or didn't feel didn't matter, not when there were chores to do and another day to get through.
It never had.